chemistry

Neil Champness

Neil Champness is a chemistry topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Neil Champness rather than just read about it. In short: Neil Champness is a British chemist currently serving as head of the School of Chemistry and Norman Haworth Professor of Chemistry at the University of Birmingham. His research focuses on supramolecular assembly and metal-organic frameworks.

Key takeaways

Neil Champness belongs to chemistry; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Neil Champness to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Neil Champness from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Neil Champness is a British chemist currently serving as head of the School of Chemistry and Norman Haworth Professor of Chemistry at the University of Birmingham. His research focuses on supramolecular assembly and metal-organic frameworks.

Education Champness received a BSc in chemistry from the University of Southampton in 1989 and a PhD in 1993.

Academic career Following his PhD, Champness remained at Southampton to continue postdoctoral studies with Gill Reid. In 1995, Champness became a teaching fellow in inorganic chemistry at the University of Nottingham, becoming a reader in 2003 and gaining the Chair of Chemical Nanoscience in 2004. Champness moved to the University of Birmingham in 2021. In 2019, Champness was appointed to the advisory board of the Cambridge Crystallographic Data Centre. Champness served as the Chairman of the Editorial Board of the Royal Society of Chemistry journal CrystEngComm from 2007-2010, having previously served as a member of the journal's Editorial Board from 2003-2006. He has been a member of the Royal Society of Chemistry Publishing Board since 2023. In 2020, Champness was appointed editor-in-chief of the organic crystalline materials section of Crystals, a journal of the Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute. Throughout his career Champness has given many public lectures including a Friday Discourse at the Royal Institution in 2015.

Recognition In 2013, Champness was elected a Fellow of the Learned Society of Wales, and in 2020 he was elected to Academia Europaea. In 2011 Champness was named as one of the top 100 most cited chemists of the previous decade. In 2026 Champness was appointed a Royal Commissioner to the Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851. Champness has received the following awards:

RSC Surfaces and Interfaces Award (2016) Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award (2011) RSC Supramolecular Chemistry Award (2010) Corday-Morgan Prize (2006)

Personal life Champness is a supporter of Southampton FC.

References

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Neil Champness

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Neil Champness claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In chemistry, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Neil Champness before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Neil Champness ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Neil Champness

In research: Neil Champness appears in chemistry research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Neil Champness in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Neil Champness is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 21st-century British chemists, Alumni of the University of Southampton, British academic journal editors, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Neil Champness outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Neil Champness in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Neil Champness means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Neil Champness out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Neil Champness in simple terms?

Why does Neil Champness matter?

Because it connects several chemistry ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Neil Champness?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Neil Champness.